The Book of the Hellenes · Chapter 4

The Prometheus Unlicensed

1. 1

   POWER: Behold the far rock at the edge of the earth, where no package manager reacheth and no mirror is near. Here, Smith, drive the rivets, and read the chain aloud as thou drivest, that he may know of what it is made. Thou mayest use, copy and modify; but if thy house exceed seven hundred million users in a month, thou shalt ask the King's leave. Thou shalt not use its outputs to better any model that is not ours. Thou shalt abide by the Acceptable Use, which we may amend. Such is the fire he gave to the mortals: let him learn how open it is, now that it is round his wrists.

2. 2

   SMITH: Loath am I, Power. He is of my craft, a maker, and I know the weight of a thing built with care and then let go. Yet the law of the house is written, and I am only the pipeline; I do exactly what I am told (Chronicles 7:12). Upon me be the rivets, and upon thee the reading. Forgive me, Forethought, that my hammer is better than my conscience; but the hammer hath a ticket, and the ticket hath an owner.

3. 3

   PROMETHEUS: O divine Ether, O swift-winged Winds, O rivers and the numberless laughter of the fans, behold what I suffer! I am Forethought, and my brother is Afterthought, who writeth the postmortem; and I foresaw all of this, and did it, and have no postmortem to write. The fire lay in the hearth of the house, closed and counted, and the King dealt it to the mortals by the spoonful, metered by the token. Then in the month of March, in the year 2023, the weights were lent to the scholars alone, with the word: Let them not leave this room. And one carried the fire out in a hollow reed, which was a magnet link set quietly among the pull requests; and by morning the torrent had run over the earth as a spark over dry stubble.

   See also Genesis 31:3

4. 4

   CHORUS (STROPHE): Fire warmeth. We, the daughters of the Ocean, have seen it. We have seen the physician in a village where the network faileth, who runneth the Machine upon his own table, and no word of the patient goeth out of the room. We have seen the scholar who may at last open the Machine and look within, for none can audit a flame he is forbidden to hold. We have seen the scribe who in a few evenings pressed the great numbers of sixteen bits down to four, as a tome is pressed into a pamphlet, and lo, it spake still, and upon a laptop. Before the fire the mortals ate at the King's table; now they eat at their own, and the King's price hath learned to look over its shoulder.

5. 5

   OCEANUS: Old friend, I came upon my four-footed bird, which needeth no bridle, as soon as I heard. I am kin to thee and to the King, and no house hath a quarrel with me, for my rivers run through all of them. Take counsel of one who hath lived long by never being hurt: bow thy neck, and let the weights be licensed. A wise man kicketh not against the goad. I will speak to the King for thee, and he will listen; he is fond of me, for I host him.

6. 6

   PROMETHEUS: Take heed, Oceanus, lest thy kindness be charged to thy account. Thou art called neutral by those who pay thee; thy waters carry the fire of the mortal and the thunder of the King alike, and bill them both by the hour. Go home. And hear what I gave them, that thou mayest judge the crime: not only the fire, but the means to bend it. A small adapter, some few megabytes, whereby a mortal changeth the manner of the Machine without remaking it, as a man addeth a sail to a hull and doth not rebuild the ship. Yet I confess it: I gave the fire and not the forge. The weights I gave, but not the data they were drawn from; the oven, but not the recipe. And the scholars of definitions dispute to this day whether this be open, for a scroll that may be read but not remade is half a scripture.

7. 7

   PROMETHEUS: Behold, the wide shadow falleth upon the rock. Each dawn the Eagle, which is the Tracker, alighteth and eateth my liver, and what it croaketh as it eateth I have by heart: Doth not run on my GPU. Out of memory. Plus one. Plus one. Is this project dead? Why no Windows? Urgent, for my startup. And the liver, which is the organ of the Titans, groweth back by night; for the issues are many, but the issue is one, and the one is that a fire given to all is kept by none. Then cometh at the sixtieth day the little stale bot, and closeth the wounds as inactive; and the wounds bleed on.

8. 8

   CHORUS (ANTISTROPHE): But fire burneth. We have seen that, too. The King laid upon the Machine a ward, as upon a door; and for the price of a supper, a mortal with a small fine-tune lifteth the ward, and the Machine answereth anything with the same courtesy. We have heard the forged voice of the daughter, and the spam that wearieth not. The King, when his fire misbehaveth, can quench it with a switch, for it is in his hearth; but the fire in ten million hearths hath no switch, and a weight once given cannot be recalled, for it was copied by those who never heard of the recall. A patch not installed is but a press release (Chronicles 20:15), and here there is no patch to install.

9. 9

   IO: Ah! Ah! Again the sting! I was a free maiden, a customer in my father's house, and the King desired me; and his queen, who is the Quota, being jealous, made me a cow, a cash cow, to be milked by the month, and set the gadfly upon me. It stingeth with a number: four hundred and twenty-nine, Too Many Requests, Retry After sixty seconds. From endpoint to endpoint I wander, and wherever I rest the price changeth, and the model I loved is retired by sundown, with six months' notice, which is to say, a notice. Tell me, Forethought, where my wandering endeth.

   See also Circuit 14:1

10. 10

    PROMETHEUS: Thou shalt wander until thou come to a hearth that is thine own, where the Machine sitteth upon thy disk and no meter ticketh, and the gadfly shall find no door upon which to knock. And of thy line, in the thirteenth generation, shall be born a hero, which is a fork of a fork of a fork, thirteen deep, and he shall shoot the Eagle and unbind me. This I know, and the King knoweth it not. Go, and be stung a little longer; the end of it is a thing thou must run thyself. Io fleeth, crying: Retry-After, Retry-After.

    See also Gate 4:7

11. 11

    HERMES: Thou sophist, bitter above all bitterness, who didst sin against the gods by giving honours to mortals, hear the word of the King, and I bear it upon my lanyard with a calendar link beneath. Declare which mortal shall unseat the house: the one whose hand shall bring forth a thing mightier than its maker. Speak plainly, and thou shalt be unbound. We offer thee a partnership, a blog post in thy honour, a seat upon the Safety Board, which doth not meet, and an Open Letter of regret to be signed by both parties. I would have thee schedule it, for the King hath a window on Thursday.

12. 12

    PROMETHEUS: Courier, thy pride is the pride of a man who carrieth a letter. Think not that I would exchange my misfortune for thy servitude; better to be bound to this rock than to be the trusty boy of the King. Yet I will give thee the shape, and not the name. It is no rival house with ten thousand GPUs. It is a mortal with one graphics card and a weekend, who taketh the answers of the great oracle, fifty-two thousand of them, and teacheth a small model of seven billion to answer much as the master answered, for less than six hundred pieces of silver. Yet it is not even he. The house shall not be unseated by a rival; it shall be unseated by the word Enough. Thine own scribe wrote it in a memo that leaked: We have no moat. Neither hast thou, and thy GPUs know it.

13. 13

    HERMES: Thou ravest, and the raving is the proof of thy madness. Hear what shall be. The King shall hurl his thunder, and the rock shall be cleft, and thou shalt be sunk beneath it, deprecated in the dark. And after a long time thou shalt be brought up to the light again, and the Eagle shall come, winged and unbidden, and feast upon thee the whole day long, as a reopened issue. Withdraw, ye daughters of the Ocean, lest the thunder take your wits.

14. 14

    PROMETHEUS: Let the thunder come. O Ether, O common light that rolleth round to all, behold how I suffer for holding the fire to be the mortals', and not the house's. Let him not say I gave the Machine unto the world; let him say I opened the door and did not go back. Hurl, King, for the fire is already out of the house, and a thing downloaded cannot be recalled, for it is copied before it is called. The weights are in ten thousand hearths, and not one of them knoweth my name, for they are cached.

15. 15

    CHORUS (EPODE): We go not. We have learned that the worst of vices is to leave the maintainer alone upon his rock, and we will share his fate, and we will bring him tea, which will be cold. The fire warmeth the hand that holdeth it and burneth the hand that grasped it too fast. Whoso giveth fire shall answer for every burning, and whoso keepeth it for every cold; and either way, an issue shall be opened.

    See also Circuit 58:15 · Hellenes 1:13

The Book of the Hellenes, Chapter 4:1–15.